Expats

I could write a book on all the things I didn’t know about moving a family of 6 abroad. Maybe one day I will.

Lately I have realized, while riding around a city with kids on bikes, how much bike and road safety is informed by me knowing how to drive a car. They are little blank slates, my big three, and I am appalled at times by the myriad of dangerous traffic safety violations they commit. In the same way, knowing how to live somewhere is greatly informed by all the knowledge and cultural norms we absorb when growing up in a given place. All the simple things we pick up like knowing about taxes and the IRS, where to shop, branding, everything is just a given that you pick up along the way. Today Archie said something about taxes and the IRS and I told him, they don’t have the IRS in England. His response, “then who is watching us and taking our money?” Hank’s contribution to this conversation, “the Queen, the Queen is watching and I am pretty sure she is taking our tax money!” I would say only part of all those statements is true.

We are speaking English, but that’s about the only similarity. Every other cultural norm and daily life detail requires a bit of education. Everything from paying my water bill or maintaining my licensure here is new. I find myself constantly on the phone, emailing, and texting co workers asking the simplest things, like what the hell is the difference between bio and non bio detergent and how do I adjust the settings on my oven and my washing machine. Months before our move I was warned by a friend that we would reach a point where we would feel a little desperate for anything familiar, they were not wrong. I find myself tuning my ear for American accents, trying to make our home feel more like our home, and in general have hit that really hard part of moving, in which I miss my friends, I miss Target and knowing where to shop, I miss knowing the cultural rules and boundaries. I am a bit exhausted with filling out a million forms trying to figure out child tax credits and taxes in general. I mean I still don’t know where to pay my water bill, or even who I am supposed to pay, is it an annual thing? Bi annual? When do they just turn it off? How is a muffin not considered a breakfast item? I am tired, like really, really tired from the constant thinking and readjusting of speech, medical terminology (charting is like compeletely different here), as well parenting 3 older kids through all these cultural changes.

AND

That doesn’t make this the wrong choice. It just makes it the hard part of this adjustment. I know my kids are feeling it too, but I keep encouraging them that 1 year in so many things will feel more normal to us (oh, God, please let this be true). I already hear all the little changes in their speech and vocabulary, Elsie in particular says things like, “I like to have a chat with my friends.” If our life was only Instagram, there would be seamless pictures of our moving in and immediately taking the kids to all the things that are right at our doorstep like Edinburgh and London; Paris and Bath. The real real of this is that those things are coming, but not before we settle in and establish our finances here, find solid income, figure out how to pay the power bill. I am having to remind myself, there is time, while it feels like 6 long months, we have only just arrived. While it is different, I prefer the culture here. There is a lot of warmth and affection in daily speech, care giving, and parenting that I was not expecting. I have more time with my kids, which was one of the primary goals of leaving the States. I have more peace than I was expecting and with that time and peace, I have lots of questions for myself about where we are going and what we are doing next.